Obama as Reagan? Deconstructing the False Obama Achievement Narrative

In a recent Newsweek article entitled “President Obama – The Democrat’s Ronald Reagan“, Newsweek’s Andrew Sullivan sums up the media narrative that tries to portray the Obama administration as having an “impressive list of achievements”. Freedom-loving Americans need to have simple, effective arguments to make to combat these narratives. This is especially true when standard operating procedure for both Democrats and the media is to substitute wishful thinking for truth and evidence. Here are some of the claims made for Obama’s “achievements”:

He will emerge as an iconic figure who struggled through a recession and a terrorized world, reshaping the economy within it, passing universal health care, strafing the ranks of al -Qaeda, presiding over a civil-rights revolution, and then enjoying the fruits of the recovery….

Newsweek, Sept 24, 2012

The “GM is Alive” meme emerges here as a broader claim that Obama has “reshaped the economy”. The wishful thinking is that continuous debt and money printing, strategic bailouts for unions and political allies, and ineffective stimulus will eventually result in a recovery that Obama can take credit for. The unfortunate truth is that the “real” economy has not improved at all, GM is still bankrupt, Obamacare is destroying business sentiment, and the government dependency rolls are at all-time highs, fueled by unsustainable deficits. No recovery has sprung from this combination, and none will. In fact, we teeter on the brink of another downturn, Bill Clinton’s “gut feeling” notwithstanding.

The “strafing Al-Qaeda” theme is also hollow. Recent Middle East terror attacks that claimed our diplomats’ lives show that this administration has, in fact, been asleep at the wheel. They used anti-terror tactics (that they decried when Bush instituted them) to gain the intelligence to send in the Navy Seals, where they killed a perverted, old shell of a leader. Meanwhile, their indecipherable foreign policy leaves the rest of the world wondering where the US loyalties really lie, and we turn our back on allies while the world burns; and new Irans emerge in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and all around us.

The narrative that ObamaCare has “reshaped health care” is similarly hollow. In fact, Obamacare has been a farce, even before its implementation. It hurts small businesses, shifts health care costs onto a younger generation that is already struggling, sets up impossible-to-follow, business-killing regulations, and threatens existing programs. In early implementation, it has cost more than planned. Doctors refuse to participate. Waivers are granted to cronies. Its only “achievement” is to abolish limits on preexisting conditions, which will really take the risk-sharing premise of insurance and turn it on its ear, making all insurance more expensive. It is big-government policy at its worst.

The author also cites a “civil rights revolution”. Calling gay rights “civil rights” is one of the most egregious ways that folly has worked its way into our public consciousness. We make people into a “minority” based entirely on their behavior (not their race or ethnicity) and then try to foist their viewpoint on everyone as a matter of political correctness. Along the way, people who dare to have a different, moral viewpoint are labeled as “bigots” and “hate groups”. This is a false strawman of a “civil rights” issue. It is a way for people who think they are morally superior to strike a pose against something that is not a problem and to try and posture like they care in order to claim a record of achievements.

In fact, “posturing” is the right way to describe all of Obama’s narrative of “achievements”. The economic recovery is an illusion. There has been no real reform of health care. The war against terror and evil has been reduced to slogans while an increasingly unstable world falls apart, and false civil rights issues are trumpeted as “enlightened progress”. Obama is not the Ronald Reagan of Democrats. He is the Ronald Reagan of frauds.

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